Convicted killer apologizes before execution

Parolee condemned for killing man, child executed

Associated Press

Published
5:30 am CDT, Wednesday, July 11, 2001

HUNTSVILLE -- Apologizing profusely and repeatedly asking forgiveness, convicted killer James Wilkens Jr. was put to death today for a shooting spree that claimed the lives of his ex-girlfriend's 4-year-old son and her new boyfriend almost 15 years ago in Tyler.

"I am sorry. Please hear me. Please understand. In the name of God, please forgive me," he said, looking at Sandra Williams, the mother of the 4-year-old killed in the rampage. Only Williams, shot in the back, survived.

"Find peace and comfort. I am sorry. For your sake, forgive me, all of you," he said, looking at Williams and the child's two grandfathers, who also witnessed the execution.'

Then he turned to several friends who also were witnesses and expressed love to them and thanked them for "giving me more than I deserve."

Then Wilkens prayed, asking God to forgive "the horror I have committed."

After telling the warden he was ready to go and urging that "God be with all of you,'" he exhaled once, gasped a couple of times and slipped into unconsciousness as the drugs took effect. He was pronounced dead at 6:23 p.m. CST.

Wilkens, 39, was the 10th condemned inmate to be executed this year in Texas, where a record 40 convicted murderers were executed last year. At least seven more executions are scheduled over the next 10 weeks.

Wilkens was already on parole after serving 14 months of a five-year sentence for robbery when he was arrested a day after the child, Larry McMillan Jr., was shot repeatedly as he cried on a couch. Also killed in the rampage two days after Christmas 1986 was Richard Wood, 28.

Wood was dating Wilkens' former girlfriend. According to testimony at his trial, Wilkens broke into Wood's empty trailer home and waited until Wood and Williams and the child returned from an out-of-town holiday trip.

All three were shot when the apparently jealous and enraged Wilkens opened fire with a .22-caliber semiautomatic rifle. Only Williams, shot in the back, survived. Wood was shot in the head. The child was shot 13 times.

"The first thing that goes through my mind is the picture of Larry McMillan Jr. sitting on the couch with a toothbrush in his mouth with several bullet holes in him that Wilkens had fired at point-blank range," Smith County District Attorney Jack Skeen said. "I can still see him slumped over with the bullet holes in him. A 4-year-old boy. It was just horrible."

Wilkens pleaded innocent, contending he was insane at the time of the attack.

"There was no question about his competency," Skeen said. "It was just a story.

"He was sitting there and waiting. He just ambushed them. It was like: bang! bang! He just waited and executed."

"In all honesty, as God as my witness, I do not remember," Wilkens, who declined to speak with reporters in the weeks leading up to his execution, said in a 1992 death row interview. "I went nuts, to tell you the truth. I remember some, not all. It's very bizarre. I had killed them so many times in my mind, it was a dream. I didn't know reality."

A Smith County jury in 1988 convicted Wilkens of capital murder and decided he should be put to death. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, however, reversed the conviction and sentence in 1992, saying psychological testimony improperly was admitted during the punishment phase of the trial.

He was tried a second time the following year, telling a jury he heard voices and envisioned Wood as his abusive father. The second jury wasn't swayed, convicting him and also deciding he should be executed.

"My son didn't get a second chance," Williams, now Sandra Carpenter, said this week.

Carpenter, who testified against Wilkens at each trial, had to have a section of her intestine removed because of her injuries. She said she also continues to suffer from post-traumatic stress syndrome.

"It doesn't let you forget," she said. "I wish it did.

"I hate him for it."

The U.S. Supreme Court two weeks ago refused to review Wilkens' case and federal appeals courts rejected late requests seeking to halt the execution.

Next on the injection list is Richard Kutzner, set to die July 25 for strangling a Montgomery County real estate agent during a robbery in 1996. It's one of two death sentences given to Kutzner, who also was convicted and condemned for a similar robbery and murder in Harris County two weeks earlier.